SAA-C03 Exam Dumps - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)

This solution meets the requirements most securely because it uses IAM roles and the STS AssumeRole API operation to authenticate and authorize the inventory application to access the DynamoDB tables in different accounts. IAM roles are more secure than IAM users or certificates because they do not require long-term credentials or passwords. Instead, IAM roles provide temporary security credentials that are automatically rotated and can be configured with a limited duration. The STS AssumeRole API operation enables you to request temporary credentials for a role that you are allowed to assume. By using this operation, you can delegate access to resources that are in different AWS accounts that you own or that are owned by third parties. The trust policy of the role defines which entities can assume the role, and the permissions policy of the role defines which actions can be performed on the resources. By using this solution, you can avoid hard-coding credentials or certificates in the inventory application, and you can also avoid storing them in Secrets Manager or ACM. You can also leverage the built-in security features of IAM and STS, such as MFA, access logging, and policy conditions.

References:

IAM Roles

STS AssumeRole

Tutorial: Delegate Access Across AWS Accounts Using IAM Roles

The solution that will reduce the launch time of the application during the next testing phase is to launch the EC2 On-Demand Instances with hibernation turned on and configure EC2 Auto Scaling warm pools. This solution allows the application to resume from a hibernated state instead of starting from scratch, which can save time and resources. Hibernation preserves the memory (RAM) state of the EC2 instances to the root EBS volume and then stops the instances. When the instances are resumed, they restore their memory state from the EBS volume and become productive quickly. EC2 Auto Scaling warm pools can be used to maintain a pool of pre-initialized instances that are ready to scale out when needed. Warm pools can also support hibernated instances, which can further reduce the launch time and cost of scaling out.

The other solutions are not as effective as the first one because they either do not reduce the launch time, do not guarantee availability, or do not use On-Demand Instances as required. Launching two or more EC2 On-Demand Instances with auto scaling features does not reduce the launch time of the application, as each instance still has to go through the initialization process. Launching EC2 Spot Instances does not guarantee availability, as Spot Instances can be interrupted by AWS at any time when there is a higher demand for capacity. Launching EC2 On-Demand Instances with Capacity Reservations does not reduce the launch time of the application, as it only ensures that there is enough capacity available for the instances, but does not pre-initialize them.

References:

Hibernating your instance - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Warm pools for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling - Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

This solution will meet the requirements because Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a fully managed service that provides highly reliable, scalable, and feature-rich file storage built on NetApp’s popular ONTAP file system. FSx for ONTAP supports both NFS and SMB protocols, which means it can be accessed by both Linux and Windows applications without code changes. FSx for ONTAP also eliminates data duplication and inefficient resource usage by automatically tiering infrequently accessed data to a lower-cost storage tier and providing storage efficiency features such as deduplication and compression. FSx for ONTAP also integrates with other AWS services such as Amazon S3, AWS Backup, and AWS CloudFormation. By migrating the applications to Amazon EC2 instances, the company can leverage the scalability, security, and performance of AWS compute resources. 

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. Amazon Inspector automatically assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations from best practices. After performing an assessment, Amazon Inspector produces a detailed list of security findings prioritized by level of severity1. Amazon Inspector can scan the EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities and provide a report of each instance’s patch status. AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is a capability of AWS Systems Manager that automates the process of patching managed nodes with both security-related updates and other types of updates. Patch Manager uses patch baselines, which include rules for auto-approving patches within days of their release, in addition to optional lists of approved and rejected patches. Patch Manager can patch fleets of Amazon EC2 instances, edge devices, on-premises servers, and virtual machines (VMs) by operating system type2. Patch Manager can patch the EC2 instances on a regular schedule and provide a report of each instance’s patch status. Therefore, the combination of Amazon Inspector and AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager will meet the requirements of the question.

The other options are not valid because:

Amazon Macie is a security service that uses machine learning to automatically discover, classify, and protect sensitive data in AWS. Amazon Macie does not scan the EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities, but rather for data classification and protection3. A cron job is a Linux command for scheduling a task to be executed sometime in the future. A cron job is not a reliable way to patch the EC2 instances on a regular schedule, as it may fail or be interrupted by other processes4.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect your AWS accounts and workloads. Amazon GuardDuty does not scan the EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities, but rather for network and API activity anomalies5. AWS Systems Manager Session Manager is a fully managed AWS Systems Manager capability that lets you manage your Amazon EC2 instances, edge devices, on-premises servers, and virtual machines (VMs) through an interactive one-click browser-based shell or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). Session Manager does not patch the EC2 instances on a regular schedule, but rather provides secure and auditable node management2.

Amazon Detective is a security service that makes it easy to analyze, investigate, and quickly identify the root cause of potential security issues or suspicious activities. Amazon Detective does not scan the EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities, but rather collects and analyzes data from AWS sources such as Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon VPC Flow Logs, and AWS CloudTrail. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus that makes it easy to connect applications using data from your own applications, integrated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, and AWS services. EventBridge delivers a stream of real-time data from event sources, such as Zendesk, Datadog, or Pagerduty, and routes that data to targets like AWS Lambda. EventBridge does not patch the EC2 instances on a regular schedule, but rather triggers actions based on events.

References: Amazon Inspector, AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager, Amazon Macie, Cron job, Amazon GuardDuty, [Amazon Detective], [Amazon EventBridge]

This solution will meet the requirements of minimizing hosting service costs based on demand and providing the streaming content of a movie within 5 minutes of a user purchase. S3 Intelligent-Tiering is a storage class that automatically optimizes storage costs by moving data to the most cost-effective access tier when access patterns change. It is suitable for data with unknown, changing, or unpredictable access patterns, such as newer movies that may have higher demand1. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is a storage class that provides low-cost storage for archive data that is retrieved asynchronously. It offers flexible data retrieval options from minutes to hours, and free bulk retrievals in 5-12 hours. It is ideal for backup, disaster recovery, and offsite data storage needs2. By using expedited retrieval, the user can access the older movie video file in 1-5 minutes, which meets the requirement of 5 minutes3.

References: 1: Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering Storage Class | AWS4, Overview section2: Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Glacier Deep Archive Retrieval …1, Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval section3: Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Glacier Deep Archive Retrieval …1, Retrieval Rates section.

The solution that meets the requirements with the most operational efficiency is to configure public subnets in the existing VPC and deploy an MSK cluster in the public subnets. This solution allows the data ingestion solution to be publicly available over the internet without creating a new VPC or deploying a load balancer. The solution also ensures that the data in transit is encrypted by enabling mutual TLS authentication, which requires both the client and the server to present certificates for verification. This solution leverages the public access feature of Amazon MSK, which is available for clusters running Apache Kafka 2.6.0 or later versions1.

The other solutions are not as efficient as the first one because they either create unnecessary resources or do not encrypt the data in transit. Creating a new VPC with public subnets would incur additional costs and complexity for managing network resources and routing. Deploying an ALB or an NLB would also add more costs and latency for the data ingestion solution. Moreover, an ALB or an NLB would not encrypt the data in transit by itself, unless they are configured with HTTPS listeners and certificates, which would require additional steps and maintenance. Therefore, these solutions are not optimal for the given requirements.

References:

Public access - Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

This solution meets the requirements most cost-effectively because it leverages the serverless and event-driven capabilities of AWS Lambda and Amazon EventBridge. AWS Lambda allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers, and you pay only for the compute time you consume. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that lets you connect your applications with data from various sources and routes that data to targets such as AWS Lambda. By using Amazon EventBridge, you can create a rule that triggers a Lambda function to run the program when reports are requested, and you can also schedule the rule to run during the last week of each month. This way, you can generate reports in the least amount of time and pay only for the resources you use.

References:

AWS Lambda

Amazon EventBridge

The least outstanding requests (LOR) algorithm is a load balancing algorithm that distributes incoming requests to the target with the fewest outstanding requests. This helps to avoid overloading any single target and improves the overall performance and availability of the web application. The LOR algorithm can use the RequestCount and TargetResponseTime CloudWatch metrics to determine the number of outstanding requests and the response time of each target. These metrics measure the number of requests processed by each target and the time elapsed after the request leaves the load balancer until a response from the target is received by the load balancer, respectively. By using these metrics, the LOR algorithm can route new requests to the targets that are less busy and more responsive, and avoid sending requests to the targets that are already overloaded or slow. This solution meets the requirements of the company.

References:

Application Load Balancer now supports Least Outstanding Requests algorithm for load balancing requests

Target groups for your Application Load Balancers

Elastic Load Balancing - Application Load Balancers